The Revolt of the Creative Class

Some have already taken to calling the events in the Middle East "the Arab 1848." Future generations, perhaps, will talk about the "spirit of 2011" when the ground begins to crumble beneath their own autocracies.

But are the same factors at work today as they were in past revolutionary surges? Some are undoubtedly similar -- throngs of disgruntled people have taken to the streets, questing for freedom and economic opportunity. Others, like the use of social media from YouTube to Facebook and Twitter, are undoubtedly new and different. Do the unfolding events of 2011 fit with our existing understanding of revolution or might they warrant updating?

By far the most influential and infamous account of revolution comes from Karl Marx. In The Communist Manifesto, authored with his benefactor and collaborator Frederich Engels and published in the real 1848, Marx argued that that revolutions are an inevitable and necessary outgrowth of economic development. The rise of industry and of an emergent capitalist class upended the old feudal order while ushering in a new more dynamic but inherently unstable capitalist system. As the capitalist class rises to new heights, Marx wrote, the working class is simultaneously expanded and immiserated, sowing the seeds of the next revolutionary impulse and its own demise.

Many alternative accounts of revolution have been proposed since Marx's day. In nations where capitalism emerged early, the rising bourgeoisie was able to secure a power base independent of the aristocracy and usher in a process of gradual democratization, according to Barrington Moore classic, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Countries whose economies developed later were more likely to undergo abrupt transformations. Students played a key role in the revolutionary uprisings of 1968; the same era saw the rise of the civil rights movement in the United States and of the women's and gay liberation, environmental, and anti-war movements in the advanced nations. These "new social movements" came to be seen a new driving force behind political activism.

The uprisings of 2011, however, owe much of their impetus to the working class and labor movements as well as young people and students, according to the Middle East expert Juan Cole. Rising unemployment rates, stagnant wages and falling living standards prompted blue-collar workers to return to the barricades.

But a new generation of techies, social media types, and digitally savvy professionals have also played a visibly important role. Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who became the public face of Egypt's uprising, is the veritable archetype of this Creative Class, spanning science, technology and engineering professionals, management and business executives, doctors, health care professionals and lawyers, as well as arts, culture and media workers. In an emotional interview recorded immediately after his release from detention, Ghonim pointed explicitly to the role that Facebook and YouTube music videos played in Mubarak's ouster. "We're the youth who loves Egypt," he declared, "And we did this because we love Egypt." Intellectuals and artists as well as students have long participated in revolutionary movements, but usually in subsidiary roles. This time creative class members are part of the vanguard.

In identifying the creative class role, I do not intend to diminish the role of unions and various other political, religious and social movements that have driven this and other seasons of revolution. I simply aim to call attention to this key factor that has become increasingly salient to the surge of revolutionary activity occurring today.

Using data from the International Labor Organization, the map below charts the percentage of the workforce in the creative class in the Middle East and around the world.

The highest percentages of the creative class -- in the range of 40 to 45 percent -- are found in wealthy, advanced nations like the Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, Scandinavia, Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada. Egypt's creative class comprises roughly a third (33.1%) of its workforce, on par with the United States (34.8%). Only Israel -- where the creative class makes up 40 percent of the workforce -- has a higher creative class share in the Middle East. The creative class looms larger than one might expect, numbering one in five workers in Saudi Arabia (23.2%), the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (22%), Qatar (21.8%), Syria (21.8%) and Algeria (21.4%). These levels are higher than in the rapidly growing nation of Brazil (18.4%) and roughly triple that of China (7.4%), the world's second largest economy.

Not all countries collect and report data on their creative class and other workforce categories. These figures are lacking for Iraq, Lebanon, Tunisia, Libya, and Kuwait in the Middle East, as well as several dozen other countries in the rest of the world. So I also use another closely related measure that is more systematically available for a larger group of nations -- the level of human capital -- the percentage of the young adults engaged in post-secondary or "tertiary" education. This measure is closely related to creative class workforce (with a substantial statistical correlation of .75).

The map above shows the human capital levels for the Middle East and the world. The top ranked nations on this measure -- Korea, Finland, the US, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, and, perhaps surprisingly, Greece -- have more than 75 percent of their young adults enrolled in tertiary education. For advanced nations like the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, France, Italy and Japan the figure is 55 to 60 percent. Israel is the highest ranked Middle Eastern nation on this measure (57%). But several other Middle Eastern nations are also quite high, notably Libya (53%) and Lebanon (49%). Tertiary enrollment levels are higher in the West Bank (38%) and Jordan (35%) than they are in Hong Kong (34%). And tertiary enrollment levels are above 25% in Bahrain (31%), Egypt (29%), Tunisia (28%), and Saudi Arabia (27%). Tertiary enrollment in Iran (24%) and the UAE (23%) are roughly the same as Brazil (23%).

Typically, creative class and human capital levels are very closely associated with economic development. Nations with substantial creative class shares and levels of high human capital tend to be among the richest in the world. But for many Middle East nations, the standard of living is lower than their creative class and human capital levels would seem to warrant. This gap is a signal of unrealized economic potential. It can help account for the pent-up social stresses that stem from a country's inability to translate the talent, creativity, and ambition of its smartest citizens into greater levels of economic development and well-being for its citizens. This frustration is pronounced not just among those who are unemployed or locked in dead-end jobs, but also among those who do have flourishing careers with leading global organizations-- Ghonim being a clear case in point.

With the help of my colleague Charlotta Mellander, I developed a simple metric to gauge this. We created simple ratios, dividing the creative class percentage of the workforce on the one hand, and human capital levels on the other, by the level of economic output (GDP) per capita.

These measures are not perfect. Still, the results are intriguing and shed light on an important, heretofore neglected factor in revolutionary movements.

The map above shows the first of these ratios -- the creative class to GDP ratio -- for the Middle East and the world. Egypt ranks 7th overall on this measure, with 33 percent of its workforce in the creative class and a GDP of just $1,620 dollars per person. The West Bank-Gaza Strip ranks 6th - with 24 percent of its workforce in the creative class and just $1,056 in GDP per capita. Compare that to, say, Hong Kong, where the creative class numbers 34% and per capita GDP is $32,250, or Austria with its 35& creative class share and its per capita GDP of $25,940. The ratio is also considerable in Syria (22%, $1271), Algeria (21%, $2134), and Iran (16%, $2023). But the worst ratios of all are found in nations outside the Middle East: Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Ukraine, Mongolia, and Pakistan. China's ratio is about the same as Croatia's, Slovakia's and Jamaica's. This measure does not capture everything. The UAE, Qatar and Bahrain, which has been the scene of significant unrest, all register relatively small ratios.

The map below charts the second of the measures, the ratio of human capital to GDP, for the Middle East and the world. Several Middle Eastern nations post high ratios -- West Bank-Gaza Strip (39% human capital, $1,096 per capita GDP), Egypt (29%, $1,617), Jordan (35%, $2249), Tunisia (28%, $2526), and Iran (24%, $2,023). While Iraq has a much lower level of human capital, its ratio is also quite high (15%, $681). Lebanon, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, and Morocco post moderate but still considerable ratios. As with creative class share, the worst ratios are found outside the Middle East, in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Moldova, Mongolia and the Ukraine.

China ranks 53th about the same as Uganda, Colombia and Tunisia. As with the creative class ratio, this measure has its limits. Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE and Bahrain all register relatively low ratios.

I don't pretend that these measures offer a comprehensive theory of revolution. Revolutions are infrequent and relatively unique events, each of them the products of many interacting social, political, economic, and cultural forces, as sizable literatures in history, comparative sociology, and political science have documented (Daniel Little summarizes some of this literature, notably the seminal Dynamics of Contention by Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, over at his blog Understanding Society). And then there are nations like Bahrain, where revolutionary uprisings occur alongside relatively high levels of wealth: Money, after all, does not necessarily buy happiness, contentment, or freedom.

Americans may have an allergic revolution to the notion of class, but it's time to put it back at the center of the conversation about revolution. The working class has certainly played a much larger role in the Middle East uprisings than is commonly credited, but so too has the digital savvy, social media skills, and activism of the creative class.

Alongside the creative class and human capital, there is one more factor that plays a key role both in revolutionary unrest as well as economic development. In my next post, I take a close look at the role played by cities, urbanisation, and geographic proximity.

Richard Florida is Co-founder and Editor at Large of CityLab.com and Senior Editor at The Atlantic. He isdirector of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto and Global Research Professor at NYU.
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